Nathan Young
Bio
Participation4
Create prediction markets and forecasting questions on AI risk and biorisk. I also work part-time at a prediction market.
Use my connections on Twitter to raise the profile of these predictions and increase the chance that decision-makers discuss these issues.
How others can help me
Talking to those in forecasting to improve my forecasting question generation tool
Writing forecasting questions on EA topics.
Meeting EAs I become lifelong friends with.
How I can help others
Connecting them to other EAs.
Writing forecasting questions on metaculus.
Talking to them about forecasting.
Posts 132
Comments2268
Topic contributions19
Not the only reason though. The only way to cash out was donations and some people didn't want to.
I went vegan for about 3 months, but found it was often a really large part of my thought process for the day "will I have enough to eat" "what will I eat". I imagine I could get it to a stable place in 6 - 12 months of it being a priority, but that focus seems better used elsewhere, even if animals are my top focus.
If you find veganism easy or fulfilling, I would recommend it. But I'm not sure I'd recommend it in general, other than being predictive of moral seriousness (though it's not clear which way causation goes there).
The move to 1000:1 is prompted by the fact that we have currently roughly $1.2m of mana issued against $1.5m cash in bank. As we move to sweepstakes, we want to make sure we can fully back this and still have a healthy runway. (fwiw, I think currency rate change is a terrible solution to this and think there's a small chance, 15%?, that we can avoid this)
- This seems like a bad situation to have gotten into. Did this happen because manifold didn't plan well or was it Future fund related? If my mana is gonna take a haircut the difference seems pretty important.
- Personally I like manifold a lot and if they said "hey we screwed up (or were screwed) and so don't have assets how can we figure this out" I would be pretty amenable to that. I know it's easy to see this as a run on the bank, but the only way to do so is to donate the money, so you have an unusually charitable group to negotiate with. I really liked the way they didn't trash Mr King in the Whales vs Minnows thing. Forgiveness is real and they have a reasonable amount of my good will to play with in situations where people screw up.
- But with very short notice saying "we're doing this" feels like I am being defected against and leaves me a lot more likely to donate everything (I have $320 on manifold). Feels like this kind of behaviour should be punished.
- Also why the need for a 10x devaluation. wouldn't this also work if they devalued by like 30%? Not sure why 1/10 was the right number.
It's easy to see this as capital controls etc etc, but the only place the money can go is to charities and if things collapse manifold may die and I don't want that. In both cases, I am differently motivated than if manifold is a faceless bank.
Best of luck on Manifund, though it's a shame you've left manifold cos I liked manifold and value is fragile. Hope you're well!
I don't respond or read fully posts that are this much longer than my posts.
Allowing debate of, e.g., white supremacy on the EA Forum, besides being simply off-topic in most cases, creates a no-win situation for the people whose rights and value are being debated and for other people who care a lot about them. If you engage in the debate, it will exhaust you and distress you, which your interlocutors may very well enjoy. If you avoid the debate or debate a bit and then disengage, this can create the impression that your views can’t be reasonably defended. It can also create the impression that your interlocutors’ views are the dominant ones in the community, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (See: "Nazi death spiral".)
Let's note that white supremacy is not regularly discussed on the EA forum and you, yes literally you, are the cause of most of this previous discussion. 3 or 4 times now I have seen people say they didn't see this discussion until they read this post.
I am not particularly worried about people thinking that sterilisation is a good solution, for instance. Perhaps if there was a post every week arguing for it, then I would want to talk about that.
I get that there are people who don't want this to be a space where these ideas are regularly discussed. There are large costs to them, similar to the costs around engaging with with Bostrom's email. These costs are real. I sense people want confidence that others will join them in pushing back when stuff like this happens.
I don't know how to give people that confidence, except to say, I see the costs of othering groups in society. How what starts as "wouldn't it be convenient if" can end up as "let's put them in camps". I don't really know how to convey this to you, but a part of me is very concerned by this.
But again, right know, the equilibrium feels okay and not a high priority to change. Let's come back to it in 6 months.
Here is the abstract:
Starting from the premise that growth is essential for some of the poorest countries, this note suggests some less obvious investments complementary to the usual approaches that encourage capital transfers and technical assistance in specific areas (e.g., by private foundations or the World Bank). It uses a framing that places a key reason for lagging growth in the agency of those with power and influence — the elite — and the coalition among them — their elite-bargain — that is not conducive to growth. Proposals are articulated that try to increase the upside of growth and reduce downside risks from a commitment to growth, that make power coalitions that go against growth harder, and that foster the formation and sustainment of growth coalitions.
Attempt to bequeath your future self a kinder, more joyful, more competent person. This might involve:
- Learning new skills - eg coding, managing some contractors, research, event organisation
- Getting into the practise of doing things - build a website that you think should exist, run an event you would attend
- Spend a portion of current resources effectively - set aside some resources, do some research, tell others what you did
- Learn what you like - what makes you smile? What do you really strongly endorse
- Get some mentors - write to people you respect asking them for tips on how you could improve
- Get a good sleep and exercise schedule - many people struggle with this later so it's good to get it locked down early.
- Get on top of your emails, and social media time - many people struggle to wean themselves of email burnout or social media addition. You could get ahead of that
- Look into different project management systems - often these help people get more done
- Take time to empathise with people in different worlds to you - you could watch youtube videos of people in poorer nations talking about their situation. GiveDirectly has a load of these I think
- Gather resources - your future self may have projects they want to work on. Earning money and putting it aside will give you more options
- Build a close network of like minded ambitious people
- Learn how you learn - you can probably get much more done at high school than you are. I wasted lots of time not realising this
- Introspect about who you want to be - what are your key goals? how would you know if you were closer to them
- Consider not being involved - often the first community one becomes involved in can be an unhealthy relationship. It's good to spend some time considering the alternative. You could work hard and have lots of nice things. And that would be okay. I don't say this to say EA is bad, but to say that if I were your friend I would want you to do things out of joy, rather than obligation[1]
You are probably right that it's hard to make concrete improvements to the world right now, but you can give a gift to your future self of a better situation. The key is for that to be something that that person will endorse. Increasing their competence, joy, kindness and optionality seems likely to be good.
- ^
Unless you become a billionaire in which case I want a bit of obligation, sorry
Yeah the voting on these posts feels pretty bizarre. Though I try not to worry about that. It usually comes out in the wash to something that seems right.
Well I have spend like an hour on your post and only just found the policy proposals. Why not put them at the top? Or with a heading?
Also I don't really see what your policies have to do with ending poverty - seems like if successful these would be taken up in the west and then there would still be huge amounts of poverty.
I agree that many people will downvote your piece without reading it (though many will upvote for the same reason, and it seems there is some of both going on here) but I really did try and read it and it was soooooo long and very unclear. Maybe my thoughts don't matter to you, but if you want my advice, clear writing involves the audience taking away what you intended from the piece. I don't think you've succeed with me, despite my spending 30 - 60 minutes on it.
Interesting take. I don't like it.
Perhaps because I like saying overrated/underrated.
But also because overrated/underrated is a quick way to provide information. "Forecasting is underrated by the population at large" is much easier to think of than "forecasting is probably rated 4/10 by the population at large and should be rated 6/10"
Over/underrated requires about 3 mental queries, "Is it better or worse than my ingroup thinks" "Is it better or worse than my ingroup thinks?" "Am I gonna have to be clear about what I mean?"
Scoring the current and desired status of something requires about 20 queries "Is 4 fair?" "Is 5 fair" "What axis am I rating on?" "Popularity?" "If I score it a 4 will people think I'm crazy?"...
Like in some sense your right that % forecasts are more useful than "More likely/less likely" and sizes are better than "bigger smaller" but when dealing with intangibles like status I think it's pretty costly to calculate some status number, so I do the cheaper thing.
Also would you prefer people used over/underrated less or would you prefer the people who use over/underrated spoke less? Because I would guess that some chunk of those 50ish karma are from people who don't like the vibe rather than some epistemic thing. And if that's the case, I think we should have a different discussion.
I guess I think that might come from a frustration around jargon or rationalists in general. And I'm pretty happy to try and broaden my answer from over/underrated - just as I would if someone asked me how big a star was and I said "bigger than an elephant". But it's worth noting it's a bandwidth thing and often used because giving exact sizes in status is hard. Perhaps we shouldn't have numbers and words for it, but we don't.